Michael Spencer

Michael is CEO and co-founder of ASSIST, LLC and managing partner at Global Expansion Strategies. He is former senior direcctor of International Business at K12 and, prior to that, he was senior vice president of The American Education Corporation. An edtech industry veteran, he is former president and founder of One2OneMate, vice president and co-founder of QuickPAD Technology Corporation as well as H45 Technology, and several other Silicon Valley startups—all of which have received multiple awards for innovation and product development. His expertise spans from advocating for one-to-one, mobile, and blended learning environments where tailored tools providing individualized education are key to student performance and achievement, to the international front where he has worked with European, Latin American, African, and Asian governments and school systems to bring about 21st-century educational reforms. Michael is fluent in Spanish, he has traveled extensively and enjoys the entrepreneurial side of business. He is a regular columnist for EdTech Digest where he writes the Smarter Schools column. Write to: mspencer52163@gmail.com

Issues and challenges to consider when implementing blended learning internationally.

SMARTER SCHOOLS | by Michael Spencer

While in the United States it may (or may not) sometimes feel like business as usual in education, there are many different issues that one needs to take into consideration when implementing blended learning in schools internationally…

Thereʼs plenty of talk about what to include on a 21st-century skills list, but why students need such skills is a different question.

Ever since the late 1990s, “21st-century skills” has been a catch-phrase racketing around the education and business worlds. It continues to do so.

Part of its persistence may be due to the excitement in defining a new age: we’re leaving behind an entire thousand-year set and advancing into a new one. But have things really changed that much? They certainly have. …